This article was sponsored by Groundwood Books. All opinions are of the writer and not representative of Groundwood Books or its subsidiary companies.
There’s a special magic to birthdays that we have all experienced in big or small ways. For many of us, birthdays, especially growing up, call to mind an image of oneself blowing out candles. But that’s not all that birthdays have to offer.
In her latest picture book, “Happy Birthday to Me,” author and illustrator Thao Lam explores through the eyes of a child the ups and downs of that special day when we celebrate circling the sun one more time.
As an adult, birthdays can be more daunting, and we might want to recall the simple joys of a child’s birthday. But if we were to truly remember the emotions that a birthday brings a child, we might recall a roller coaster of excitement, stress, and more. The quick and intense changes in feeling are what Lam captures in her book.
We follow the main character, an unnammed brown-skinned girl with straight black hair, through the peaks and valleys of her birthday, from waking up in the morning through the ensuing festivities. Inspired by her own daughter Maddie, Lam shares that the birthday setting was an idea that came from talking to her editor about how emotions can be understood as layers of a cake.
“As adults, we don’t really understand how [kids] can literally go from being happy to sad to angry, everything in the span of 15 seconds. I was trying to figure out a scenario in which a child can feel overwhelmed,” Lam shares. “[My editor] and I were talking, and then one of us said, ‘Can you imagine emotions as a layer of a cake?’ And I was, like, ‘Yes, I can imagine emotions as layers of cakes, and a birthday would be where a lot of different layers of emotions are played out.’
“Because everybody has had a birthday in some form, whether it was a small one with a single parent or a birthday at a park, to something really grand,” Lam explains,…
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